Amazon sent an email a while ago telling us all who signed up for it that they'd be opening orders for the Wii on "Sunday morning (PST)". After failing to obtain a Wii from the neighboring towns, I decided to camp out in the comfort of my bedroom... All night. I downloaded an add-on for Firefox that automatically refreshes pages. I set it for 30 seconds and the amused myself for the remainder of the night. All night. I eventually retired to rest in my bed, but I didn't actually sleep until, maybe... 7 or so, and it was only for a few minutes.

I was too excited to sleep, for one thing. I mean, come on... The Wii was released! Also, I think onions really have it in for me, because my stomach wasn't feeling too well after we ate. So a stomach ache combined with excitement produces a giddy sick feeling. So, in short, I couldn't sleep, so I waited and watched Amazon refresh... Always looking for that 1-Click Purchase button to appear.

I even began to rig up a camera monitor for it, too. I'd focus the camera on the portion of the page that would change when they opened up the orders, and when it noticed movement, it would sound a nice alarm from the computer speakers. Well, it worked well during the test, because the page would reload without any movement. Unfortunately, Amazon must have started really raking in the page visitors, because the page started loading a lot slower and it would always clear the page and redisplay everything when it reloaded... Which registered as movement and set off the alarm. So that didn't work.

Did a I get a Wii from my camping? Nope! I debated on whether or not to go to church because I still felt a little squeamish from stomach ache, but I would have felt guilty if I ditched church to stare at an Amazon page for a game console. So I went to church. Well, I get back from church and Amazon had opened it up while I was gone and had apparently sold out in under 2 minutes. Oh well. No way I was going to miss church. A bit ticked off, I was, of course, but oh well.

So then I spend the rest of the day tracking down Wii quantity information and prices and out-of-way store locations. I didn't really find much... Until I visited Sam's Club again for like... the seventeenth time. They already had a Wii item entry for a pre-order set that sold out a long time ago. That one was no good... So I decided to search for Twilight Princess to see if they at least have games I could get and cut down on how much I had to hunt down in town. No Twilight Princess alone, but it dumped me at a new Wii item entry that had Twilight Princess and Madden NFL 2007 bundled with a Wii. No discount, unfortunately, but it was active and I could add it to my cart!

But nooo. Sam's Club was taunting me. It had the Add To Cart button, but whenever I clicked it, it would say the item wasn't available and to try again later or call customer service. Yeah. They actually tried to make me call customer service. Haha! Well, so I go off and browse around other stores and periodically come back to check Sam's Club.

Suddenly, I hit the Add To Cart button and IT GETS DUMPED IN MY SHOPPING CART. Finally! The time has come! There was no time for second guessing! Luckily, having set up my membership account ahead of time, a lot of my shipping information was automatically filled in. Selected credit card payment, 7 to 10 day shipping because they were charging extravagant prices for faster shipping, and hit Checkout!

I breathed a nervous sigh of relief (if there's such a thing) and checked out the bundle for exactly what I was going to get. Uh oh. The Add To Cart button was gone and replaced with a big ol' red OUT OF STOCK. I check my order. It's still "In Process". Then, I get an order confirmation from them in my email inbox. So far, it seems I was able to just barely squeeze in an order for the Wii from Sam's Club online.

So... That's my Wii experience, and it ain't over, yet. If by Black Friday I don't get any further notifications or progress indicators from Sam's Club (never bought from them, so I have no idea how fast they'll ship or how good they are at keeping track of inventory), then my plan is to call some stores and find out when they're getting another shipment and then plan on running in as early as possible.

Hopefully, though, Sam's Club is a decent shipper and this will work out. They charged me tax, so hopefully that means they have a warehouse in Indiana and the 7 to 10 day shipping will still only be about 2 to 3 days. By luck, I'll still have a Wii by Thanksgiving and I can amuse myself while the family is over. Er... I mean... Uhm... Amuse the family when they're over! We're getting together with our friends on Friday, and I really want it by then, but it ultimately doesn't matter.

So... Tonight we went to a restaurant where a quartet from our church was going to sing. Got there right before people started pouring in to get ready for the little mini-concert thingie. (What the... spellchecker doesn't recognize "thingie"? Pfft.) Anyway, the restaurant is really awesome... I'd give you the name, but then you'd be able to stalk me, and I don't know who reads this and I'd prefer not to be stalked so I'm not going to name it! Haha! I ordered onions on my hamburger... Which was a bad idea. I used to be able to eat onions whenever I wanted, but now they give me headaches.

Speaking of food, I think I'm allergic the wheat chex, too. I had a couple of bowls of them in the past two weeks, and I got sick with what felt like a fever and headache... I'm not sure if I was coming down with something, instead, though. This merits further investigation.

Anyway, then I bought the CDs they had available. Always wanted them, but I've never been in the fix place at the right time to get them... But I got them TONIGHT! Bwahaha.

Then... The Wii. We ran to... bigger nearby town. First stop, Best Buy... People lined up with enough quilts to use as a rope ladder to climb to the top of the building. With extra quilts left over to use to keep warm... Lots of quilts. Tons and tons of quilts. So we go inside and ask the welcomer guy how many Wiis they have. He ALMOST tells us, but he ended up not telling us because it was against the rules. I would tell you what town this was, but I don't want to get this guy in trouble for thinking about breaking rules. (You know how evil Best Buy is.)

So I go, "well... there's only about 8 people lined up. We could wait here!" But then someone pulls up and yells out "hey! Does this store open at midnight?" and someone yelled back "no! They open at 9," and the other guy goes "woooooah!" (So do I, actually, but not out loud.) 9am opening? No thanks! So we go to Walmart. Gargantuan line... 40 people maybe. No possible luck there. Next? Meijer! Line was inside... Really small line. Yey! Not really... They only had 8 units to sell... Stupid Meijer.

So then we go to the lesser of the two nearby towns. A really economically dead town. The Walmart line here was lots smaller and inside. Yey! Not really... We were a few minutes too late and when they handed out numbers, they didn't give us any. So we left and came back home. No Wii for us. One of the guys up at the front of the line offered us his Wii for $450, though, because he bought a PS3 for his son when that was released and he had no money to buy games. I laughed at the guy (in my mind) for being such a sucker, and told him we weren't prepared to dish out that much money for a console.

I thought we might try Sam's Club tomorrow, but I don't really want to... I don't think a Wii is worth getting there at 5am and then rushing to church. I think my new plan is to buy the games separately from Amazon or somewhere... Extra controllers and all the extra accessories I want, then hunt for a Wii and just a Wii and not worry about the store not having everything else I want.

Personally, I can wait. Not very long... I could wait until Christmas, but January is a bit long. I could survive, though... I still have NaNoWriMo to get done. I've been slowing down... But I at least get my daily word requirement. I currently have Amazon Wii page on auto refresh, so maybe... MAYBE... With divine intervention, I can snag a Wii this week.